WORLD BANK CAREER, MONDAY 25, APRIL 2011

JOB TITLE SENIOR ECONOMIST
JOB # 110709
JOB FAMILY Economic Policy
LOCATION Abuja, Nigeria
APPOINTMENT International Hire
CLOSING DATE 10-May-2011
LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS English [Essential]; French [Essential] BACKGROUND / GENERAL DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND:
Regional integration in West Africa has been on the drawing board for at least three decades. Though substantial advances have been made, progress has been limited on a number of critical issues. Excluding Nigeria, countries in the region are too small to benefit from specialization and reaping economies of scale, with an average economic size of approximately USD 6.7 billion and population of 9.8 million in 2008. Integrating into global and regional supply chains can help increase productivity, foster growth and poverty reduction.
Current regional integration processes in West Africa cover a wide range of issues from creating an internal market to cooperation in key policy areas relating to regional public goods. However, the region remains far from achieving its overall objective of a borderless, integrated region, with a common market allowing free movement of goods and people, leading at an appropriate time to greater monetary and even political union. The lack of specific knowledge on likely costs and benefits of regional integration and their distribution, as well as the appropriate phasing of integration steps, seems to have resulted in decisions that are often not evidence-based; and sometimes captured by strong pressure groups. Weakly functioning implementation mechanisms have been another key factor contributing to the slow pace of regional integration. In addition, political commitment at national level towards concrete actions for regional integration has often been lacking and political commitment has sometimes focused on the more high profile integration steps instead of the practical implementation of these agreements...

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